


Wingbeat

by chthonianCrocuta (lovesthesoundof), Daxolotl, Innsmouth, Scribblescruff



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesthesoundof/pseuds/chthonianCrocuta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxolotl/pseuds/Daxolotl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innsmouth/pseuds/Innsmouth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribblescruff/pseuds/Scribblescruff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mutant purrbeast-burglar Roxane falls headfirst into ex-Mirthful Rhozia's revolution and learns to have faith in chaos theory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wingbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Team Rose<3Roxy's entry for Main Round One of the 2014 HSWC, for the theme "the butterfly effect". Written by Innsmouth and chthonianCrocuta, with help from Scribblescruff and Daxolotl. Illustrations by incorrigibleIxoreus. Thanks to EzzyAlpha and urbanMystic, our unstoppable bonus round team, for their hard work and support.

Two hundred feet in the air, you see your first butterfly.

It's barely recognisable at first, just a smudge of heretical red on the side of the tower. When you get close enough to touch it, though, you realise that someone has taken great care with the detail. Tiny suns have been sketched in where eye spots ought to be. A shiver runs up your spine. You move your hand away, smearing red lines across the stone like the trail of a dragged carcass.

This isn't art. It's a _sign_.

You swallow the bile gathering in the back of your throat. Your mind races. Who drew this? And why here? The edicts of the Mirthful forbid even the laziest cluckbeast-scratch depictions of butterflies. You don't know what the penalty for defiance might be in this case, but after seeing punishments for other sins – the beatings, the burnings, the floggings, the flayings – you’re reasonably certain that it wouldn't involve tea and grubcakes with the Grand Highblood. So why has someone drawn one right at the top of a blueblood's tallest tower?

Well, if it's a warning, it's too late. You've come this far. If your fence is reliable – which, despite her irritating tendency to grandstand, she usually is – there's the score of your life waiting for you just a few feet up.

So up you go.

The windowsill is unguarded; no spikes to keep off the featherbeasts, no bars to keep out an interloper. The architect must've thought the scale of the place was security enough. Whoever they were, they reckoned without you. You're a signless rogue of a thing, raised by a wild lusus and with the table manners to match, but there's never been a purrbeast-burglar like you in the history of Alternia. The lock on the window takes less than thirty seconds to pop open, and that with only one hand. Damn, you're good. The best there is.

But you don't expect to see the shadow at the opposite window.

Her staring eyes are indigo.

Struck by a sudden jolt of fear, you stumble backwards – too far backwards, oh shit, _shit_ , you scrabble for the rope and slide, your gloves are burning, your hands are burning –

The end of the rope slips from your grasp. Hot wind rushes past you. You hit – something – something solid that seems to swallow you up...

...and you wake in light, surrounded by leaves and the scent of flowers.

Oh.

It's...actually better here.

For one thing it's cooler. Under a glass roof it shouldn't be, but you think you can hear fans turning nearby. The woodsy, fetid stink of warmed-over mulch wafts up to meet your sniffnode as you limp your way through the tamed jungle in search of answers.

At the end of the carefully tended path, you find something. A thermostat screwed into the glass wall has wires snaking down from the bottom; you trace their path with your gaze until you locate a row of battered, obsolete monitors, and from there more wires wind their way out to screened-over fans, heat lamps (for night time, probably) and what looks to be a jury-rigged sprinkler system. It’s a pretty impressive setup, especially given that the tech is cobbled together from scrap metal and spliced wires and held together with crude lines of solder. The lot of it was probably scavenged from a landfill somewhere, despite seemingly being in working order. You can’t help but respect the resourcefulness of whoever put it all together. Curious, you reach down to tap a key on one of the dingy beige keyboards.

“For a supposedly world-class purrbeast-burglar, you're entertainingly clumsy.”

The voice comes from directly behind you. You almost leap out of your skin before you compose yourself enough to turn around and look – and immediately, you take a step back.

The shadow from the tower. It's _her_.

...But where's the paint? She's a highblood, definitely – the stature would've said that even without the eyes – but you've never seen an indigo without the painted Mirthful grin, and this woman's face is clear. Her eyes are a little dull, as if after sopor, but her gaze is level and lucid.

“Yeah, well, I guess that's what happens when people pop up outta nowhere and startle me when I'm working.” Your bravado is false. You think she can smell it. Careless though you've always been about your position outside the law, being directly called on it by a highblood is tying fearful knots in your insides. In a hamfisted attempt to change the subject, you ask, “How’d I get here in the Bio-Dome, anyway? I thought I was legit dead when I took a nosedive.”

“You landed in a finbeast pond,” she says primly, “and I took it upon myself to reel you in.”

“Oh.” Well, that would explain why you’re uncomfortably damp. “Thanks, I guess. Not sure why somebody of your hemocaste would bother, but thanks.”

Her smile is faint. Enigmatic. “If the hemospectrum were all it were cracked up to be, you wouldn't have made it out of the shell.”

Shit. Of course she knows about that; she's seen your eyes. Where the fuck are your goggles, anyway? “Uh. I...guess. It's...really bright in here.”

“Mm?” This seems not to have occurred to her. “Oh. Don't worry, you'll adjust. The glass is designed to protect you. They don't need it, you know. Sunlight holds no fear for them.”

Them. Who's she talking about?

At that precise moment, you notice the caterpillar crawling over her fingers.

Everything starts to click into place.

“...Butterflies. You – it was _you_ who drew the – on the – ” This is getting you nowhere. You think she might be laughing at you behind that smile. You try again. “...Are you... _raising_ them here?”

“Yes.”

...Oh. Okay. You'd half expected her to say no, or at least be cryptic. “What the heck _for_? Shit's pain-of-death illegal; they can't be _that_ pretty.”

“Have you ever wondered _why_ they're illegal?”

You have to shake your head. “Generally I don't ask questions about Grand Edicts of the Lord High Whatever...but I've got a feeling you're about to tell me.”

She is.

“Several millennia ago,” she says, “before the Empire was the impregnable cultural edifice it is tonight, there was a particularly ambitious warlord who wished to unite the galaxy under his predictably iron-fisted rule, beginning with Alternia. Naturally, he attempted to do this by subjugating all who stood before him. In this he was quite successful, as there are few things more effective than a focused, determined highblood. So he came, he saw, he conquered, and there was much lamentation of all of the above.

“Finally, he stood poised to take the Capitol. On the day of the battle, he deigned to lead the charge himself, and all did tremble before his might. Many were the skulls that were cleft by his axe, and many were the pants that were shat at the sight of his terrifying prowess.

“A lone city guard stepped up to challenge him, and he split her shield in half with one strike before raising his axe to take her head. In the second before he struck, a solitary butterfly drifted past on the breeze. Distracted by the creature, he hesitated, and in that moment the guard realized that she had no desire to become a statistic and ran him through with her sword.”

You frown. “I’m gonna let you finish, but what does that have to do with the whole ‘yo, you’re not allowed to even talk about these critters on pain of extremely gross death’ thing?”

“That warlord,” she says, “happened to be named Victus. As in Saint Victus the Decapitator, of the Mirthful Church.”

“Patron saint of crusaders and evangelists?”

“The same.”

Your lips work for a moment as you put the pieces together. “So...basically the Mirthful think of these suckers as a gigantic, heretical middle finger to anyone who wants to rule?” It’s a tempting idea; you're all for Sticking It To The Man in any possible way. Given who you are, you have to be. “Are you getting at what I think you’re getting at?”

Your host inclines her head slightly. “Dare I ask what you’d do if I said yes? Run screaming to the nearest securiterrorizer precinct, perhaps?”

You shrug. “More like say that I’m totes fuckin’ down for that. I could go for some revolution.”

“Then perhaps,” says your hostess, “the Revolution could go for you.”

You're starting to like the way she smiles. “Awesome. Do we not do names now that we're super-secret revolutionaries together, or...”

“Rhozia,” by way of an answer. “Lalond. Formerly of the Mirthful.”

“Roxane,” you say. “Strida. Formerly of having my clumsy sitmeat fall off a building.”

After a moment, she takes your extended hand, and you shake.

***

Not much comes of your supposed involvement at first. She sends word to you (how does she _find_ you?) with a rustblood in shades; he offers you a cigarette, you take it but don't light it, and her message is rolled up inside. All she wants is for you to go about your life, but to look for signs like the one you saw on the tower. Report back to her, she says, when you think you've found something of note.

Something of note. Whatever the hell that means.

Once you're out in the city you begin to understand what she's doing: when you actually _look_ for butterflies, you see them everywhere. There are caterpillars scratched on the backs of bus seats, chrysalises scrawled in dripping spray-paint over the sides of derelict subway cars. The adult creatures are even more pervasive, stenciled on the sides of abandoned buildings, wings spread wide in a wordless challenge. You have to wonder just how far the movement's reach extends, and how long it's been operating right under your sniffnode.

The real shock comes when you next visit your fence - the one with crooked horns and a gambler’s smirk and a crowded ring of extra pupils, the one who leaves you feeling cheated and angry without knowing why. You meet her in a tattoo parlour near the market district. She’s having the sprawling explosion of tattoos on her back touched up by a handsome greenblood with enough piercings in her face to set off a metal detector.

Tucked away in the chaotic patterns on her left shoulder is an eight-winged butterfly.

“Nice ink,” you say.

She scoffs. “Of course it is. I don't settle for second rate.”

And that's the whole of the conversation. The artist carries peacefully on while you dig around in your pockets for the night’s take. Some haggling and not a little theatrical indignation on your fence’s part later – all, somehow, without her jostling the needle – you depart a few caegars richer than you were before arriving, but more importantly with an idea lodged in your mind.

You weren't up that tower by accident.

The sign of the butterfly, whether you knew it or not, was meant for you.

***

“So my fence has a butterfly tattoo,” you say to Rhozia that morning as she feeds shredded leaves to fat little caterpillars. “Y'know, the one who sent me up that tower.”

Rhozia smiles faintly. “Does she now. Is that worthy of note, do you think?”

“Cute.” You're not really in the mood for the Socratic method. “You picked me out. Wanna tell me why?”

“For your caste, first of all,” she says, carefully transferring a caterpillar to a plastic tub full of leaves and twigs. “I’m far less likely to be dramatically betrayed by a mutant. Besides that, the whisper on the wind is that you're the best there is.”

You puff up a little at that. “Wind's got it right. I am.”

“Good. I'll need that, in time.”

And now you're smiling again. You never knew what it was like to be needed before. You could get used to it. “Promise not to stand scarily on any windowsills and throw me off my game?”

“No promises.”

You grin. “Asshole.”

She doesn't answer, but her lips do twitch into a smile.

***

After that it seems you're in. She sends you off to do little things at first, like retrieve a package from a grinning neophyte legislacerator who simply laughs when you half-jokingly ask her what’s in the box. Pestering Rhozia after you deliver it to her gets you nowhere. She never tells you. Another night, you find yourself relaying a sequence of numbers to a lanky figure in a dark alley. He lisps his thanks. Doesn't need to ask you to repeat them, though you had to do so under your breath the whole way there.

On your third assignment, your contact isn’t there; a girl in a ratty olive jacket darts over to you as you wait in the rain. “Mew’re too late,” she says in a hurried whisper. “The Purrthful had her taken to the brooding caverns to tend to the Mother Grub.” You thank her for the information, and she nods in acknowledgment before stepping back into the shadows.

“I see,” says Rhozia when you relay the news. An unfamiliar expression crosses her face. Sorrow, perhaps. You'd ask, but you know she won't explain.

Weeks pass before she tells you why it was you she needed.

“It was no accident you were at the top of _that_ tower, either,” she explains, pouring you tea while you sit and watch the butterflies. You're growing more accustomed to the light. “It's the best way into the building. I need an artefact from there. A sunstone. It needs to be taken to the site of the Orphaner's next address and unveiled at my signal.”

Your gaze follows a pair of drifting orange wings. “So we're gonna blind a seadweller?”

“No, it's hardly strong enough for that. It's just to attract the butterflies. To make them swarm. That will be enough to throw the subjugglators into confusion. Others will complete the work from there.”

Now you turn to her, startled. “You're talking about taking the Cathedral? With how many trolls?”

“Three dozen, thereabouts.” She seems remarkably calm. Religiously, almost. “The time is right. With the butterflies, it can be done. Once the Orphaner flees, the city will turn to us.”

You stare at her for a few moments, shaking your head in disbelief. Finally, you ask, “Why, Rhozia?”

She stands abruptly. “Because I've had my fill of being subject to the whims of a hedonistic Empress, of being reigned over by a pack of intoxicated murderclowns, all in the name of absent gods and a thousand lying saints.” There is real venom in her voice. You wonder what caused it. You wonder also, for the first time in your acquaintance, who she used to be when she was Mirthful. “I mean to turn their best weapons against them. Fear...and miracles.”

You twist your lips. “Well yeah, that's...sort of what I meant. Why not just use guns and high explosives?”

“Because it does not suffice merely to _kill_ ,” Rhozia snaps. “Or did Victus' fate teach you nothing? He slew thousands, _tens_ of thousands, only to fall before a butterfly. We aim to effect _change_ , not have a bloodbath and go back to business as usual.”

“But if they're dead they're dead. So what if they send reinforcements? We'll have to fight them everywhere anyway.”

“We.” She turns and jabs a claw in your face. “That's the word, Roxane. _We_. There is not just one butterfly. One wingbeat to cause a hurricane. That's the theory. That's the principle. But the practice...the practice is a swarm. And a swarm has no leader. It only endures when every – single – butterfly...has faith in their course.”

You squeeze your eyes shut. This is making your thinkpan hurt. “I don't get it. I just don't – ”

Rhozia turns on her heel and sweeps away among the leaves. “If you don't now,” she says, “I haven't time to explain. Do your part,” she calls over her shoulder, “and perhaps it may become clearer to you.”

It's pointless to follow her, though your pusher aches to do so. You hate this rift between you. You've no right to – you're hardly _close_ , the two of you – but you do.

Maybe she's right. Maybe if you pull this job off, you'll start to understand.

You steel yourself, and go back to the world.

***

Morning comes, and with it you're at work. Scaling the tower a second time isn’t half as daunting, even with the blazing sun; you know your footing this time, and you have a more concrete goal than ‘Maybe Grabbing Something Pointlessly Valuable For Shits And Giggles.’ You are now grabbing something pointlessly valuable for a cause, thank you very much. You could almost fancy yourself a noble sort of thief, stealing from highbloods to help – well, another highblood, but one whose ideals you can sympathize with.

It doesn’t take you long to reach the pinnacle. The window lock is still cracked from when you were last up here, and you're grinning as you slip inside, but you know you can't be too careful. Just because this gap in security hasn't been closed doesn't mean something else won't get you later.

According to Rhozia's intel, the sunstone is three floors down. There's only one door – locked, but not very well. All the tight security must be on the lower floors. Probably thought nobody'd ever climb the tower from the outside. A couple of minutes work and you're through, gazing around the room in wonder. Oh, damn. This guy is a _collector_. Antique frog statues, gleaming doubloons, a leatherbound book with a rusted clasp and an eight-toothed key, racks full of ancient swords all restored and polished to a perfect sheen. There's even a rare rifle – god, you're tempted, but there isn't time.

The sunstone is in the case at the back, locked away. This lock takes almost fifteen minutes and a lot of silent cursing, but there's nothing else, no pressure plate, no sensors. Guess he figured anyone who got in would be blinded by the damn thing. You're ready with a dark cloth bag as you open the cabinet; the worst you get is some brightly-coloured afterimages.

Half an hour and a more careful descent later, you're still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The sun is high when you reach the meeting point. Rhozia takes the cloth bag from you and weighs it in her hands. There's an odd gleam in her eyes as she examines the glow through the fabric.

“I've heard people say 'I'd pluck the stars out of the sky for you',” you joke, “but this shit's ridiculous.”

She quirks a brow at you. “I suppose so, yes. Curious. Usually that's a phrase spoken by matesprits.” While you gulp uselessly at the air for a response – something along the lines of Fuck I Didn't Mean It That Way, even though some part of you probably did – she presses the bag back into your hands. “You know where and when. Go there. Conceal yourself. Wait for the sign. And no matter what else you do, remember this: once the swarm has begun, the first to fly is just another butterfly.”

Before you can ask her to explain, she's melted into the light.

***

When the sun sets over the Capricious Cathedral, you're in position, nestled in amongst the grotesques and gargoyles overlooking the grand stairway below. You push up your goggles as the night fades and watch the lowbloods trickle into the square, first in dribs and drabs and then in hordes.

Orphaner Dualscar arrives an hour after sunset, as planned. The Mirthful shuffle out to line the steps, as planned. The speech begins, as planned.

Your pusher is in your throat.

Only when he gets to the part about dominion over the land does Rhozia step out of the shadows. Dualscar stammers. She smirks.

You don't wait for any other signal.

Goggles down. Cloth away.

_Light._

There are screams. Dualscar is one of them, wet and shrill. A clown looks up at you in confusion, gets a faceful of sunlight and howls. In the crowd, the faces with dark goggles stand out.

Rhozia lifts a hand...

...and the butterflies come.

For one perfect instant you see her standing among the swarm, hand outstretched, smiling – and then the clowns lose their shit and your comrades are on them like hounds to the kill and you can't see her any more, she's in a pack of Mirthful, fuck, _fuck_ , the butterflies were supposed to confuse them more than this –

It hits you like a fist in the gut.

Of course they went straight for her. She's a _traitor_.

You're half way down a rope inside ten seconds, on the ground in thirty, dancing around the edges of the crowd. Dualscar is fleeing into the distance. Any other night you'd've given him scar number three, but you let him run. He's nothing. You pass your fence, barely recognisable in a golden tunic, sword to club with a clown twice her size. The legislacerator with the red shades, sword-cane buried in a lanky acolyte's chest, snapping a scarlet noose around his neck. Where the fuck is Rhozia? Fuck her and her self-sacrificing metaphors. She's not just another butterfly. She's – she's –

...lying in a pool of indigo, gazing up at the light, a beatific smile on her face.

All around her, the butterflies are swarming.

“Rhozia! Nonono – ” You fall on your knees beside her and press both hands to the wound in her side. “ – no, you don't get to die now. Everyone's waiting for you – ”

“Ssshh.” She presses a bloodstained finger to your lips. A butterfly settles on the tip of her horn, wings opening and closing gently. “They don't need me any more. The swarm has begun. There is no leader in a swarm. The first to fly is...just another butterfly.”

“But you're _not_.” You sound almost hysterical. Her gaze is wavering. Or is that your vision swimming with tears? “...I get it now. You needed a miracle. You needed a _legend_ , something for people to _believe_ in. The swarm doesn't need you because every butterfly believes they could be the one to change the world. Bring down the warlord. Flap their wings and cause the hurricane. ...But the city needs a future, Rhozia. Once the swarm's passed...who's going to show the people the way?”

She blinks slowly, sighs raggedly. “The people will decide that, in good time. I'll enjoy watching them from my place in the sun. ...Oh don't look at me like that.” Because you're goggling at her. “I'm a highblood. Decapitation is about the only guaranteed kill.”

...Oh. So you're as good as swimming in her blood, but she's...going to be okay?

She coughs weakly and gives you a slightly sheepish smile. “...All the same, I...I think the next swarm might need another first butterfly.”

Your pusher swells. “It's got one,” you whisper, and press your lips to the sun on her forehead. It's stupid, it's impulsive, she'll probably laugh at you later when she's well enough to laugh, but you couldn't help it. You're too glad she's alive, alive to be with you and see all her work come to fruition.

It isn't over tonight. You haven't won the war. But you’ve caused something. A stirring. A ripple.

A wingbeat, maybe.

On another night, in another city, you sketch a butterfly on the wall of a condemned hivestem.

There are suns where the eyespots should be.


End file.
